RSS feeds

As I wrote earlier, one of the problems with the Big Society idea, when promoted as a brand by Government, is that it wraps together policies for a smaller state with practical action to promote local social action, social enterprise and voluntary action. ThisConservativeHome post by Neil O'Brien underlines its political nature. That has made it difficult for many people involved in grassroots action, who may not agree with the politics, to embrace Big Society as a space for discussion and social innovation. Here Julian Dobson launches the idea of Our Society, that emerged from discussions with John Popham, me and others involved in Big Society in the North.

So while Big Society in the North can keep debating, discussing and developing ideas of Big Society in a neutral space, we need something more: something that connects civic action, creates a mutual learning network, and helps people

work out practical ways of addressing the challenges we face.

Let’s call this space and this service Our Society. It’s not Big Society, but it engages with and complements it. It should be a social enterprise, bringing together those who are already thinking differently and helping others to do so. It can create an informed, agile network of energetic people who can develop collaborative solutions to thorny problems. It can combine the advantages of digital technologies and social media with social innovation and local engagement.

Big Society is the government’s story of how to do so; Our Society is ours – a critical friend, a space to explore, and a crucible for practical action. It recognises that social change starts at the margins, not in the mainstream – with people who are prepared to step out and experiment, rather than with those whose job is to implement policies.

What do we need to turn this into reality? First, we need doers and thinkers and innovators who understand the diversity and richness of social action but are prepared to share their learning with each other and with those who are just starting out on this journey.

Second, we need glue-ers as well as doers. What I mean by that is people who can broker, facilitate, network the networks, put people in touch with each other, and appreciate the whole as well as the parts of the jigsaw. We already have some of these within Big Society in the North, but we need more, and it shouldn’t be geographically limited. Part of that glueing needs to be about ensuring this is something for everyone – that Our Society takes into account the forgotten society of the poor, the isolated, the distressed and the marginalised.

Third, we need people who are prepared to invest modest amounts of time and resources. We’re not interested in building empires and organisations, but in freeing up enough time from enough people to feed the energy we know is out there. We want to pull together key lessons learned from the past, tap into the brain power of social innovators and share the stories that will inspire others and give them the confidence to act.

Two articles in today's Prospect magazine highlight for me why the Coalition government should scale back promotion of its contentious Big Society brand - if it wishes to see significant take up of its best ideas. Stop worrying Labour will "capture" the ground. It isn't yours or theirs, it's our.

David Marquand uses an examination of the potential cross-party appeal of the philosophy of 18th century polician Edmund Burke to argue that he is the patron saint of big society (no capitals), and there are lessons for Left as well as Right. Big society is not a return to Thatcherism, which involved large-scale state intervention. David Marquand writes: "Cameron’s big society could hardly be more different. So far from signposting a return to Thatcherism, it signposts a departure from it. True, the signpost leaves more out than it puts in. At the moment, the big society is little more than a label, a dream, a confused if glowing aspiration. There is no knowing whether the notion can be made to fly in the harsh climate we now live in. But that is not a reason for rubbishing it, as most of the left seems determined to do. It is a reason for treating it as the opening gambit in a national conversation, to which all schools of thought—left as well as right—have an obligation to contribute. At this point in our history, above all, no single tradition has a monopoly of the truth. It would be a dereliction of duty to allow one party—or even a coalition—to treat the big society as its exclusive property".

I certainly agree that conversation could, ideally, be started now. Many individuals and organisations - like those who set up Big Society in the North - see merit in Big Society ideas about devolution of power, support for local social action and social enterprise. The problem is firstly, that the Big Society brand is now contaminated by association with the coming public sector cuts. It was conceived before those were planned - but it's no good saying that if you can't also articulate clearly what Big Society stands for.

That can't just be done by government: it has to be done by those engaged on the ground, and not many will stand up for a Tory brand that launched their manifesto. Secondly, civil society organisations that well understand this are unwilling to say: "Dave, great ideas, pity about the label. We are now in consensus Coalition land, so why not go for something uncontentious like Good Society, Civil Society ... people doing good stuff for others".

They are worried that their seriousy threatened funding will be cut.

The second article in Prospect underlines the problem: it's all being see in Westminster through the usual lens of party politcs, and who who can grab an idea for electoral benefit. Shiv Malik sets out "Why Ed Miliband should own the big society". He starts off by agreeing on the potential for consensus - but then destroys the possibility of achieving that by saying new Labour leader Ed Miliband should grab the idea for himself. My suggestion to government: stop trying to sell Big Society as a brand when it is (largely) a set of good ideas in a very tough environment. People are focussing on the environment (cuts), not your ideas. Help those who are doing good stuff on the ground tell their stories, but under whatever white label brand they choose: social action, community development, local enteprise, trusts, associations, charities etc. Then ask their permission to aggregate and celebrate those achievements. Come to think of it, that's not a bad idea for Labour to steal. Here's some relevant paragraphs from Shiv Malik's article.

There is a fourth way, to Giddens’s third. As both “red Tory” ideologue Phillip Blond and “blue Labour” thinker Maurice Glasman have argued, instead of redistributing cash, the state should be helping to distribute ownership. Whether you call it the “big society” or “mutualism,” the idea is the same: that the working and middle classes will reject welfare dependency as a long-term solution if, with help from the central state, they can use their own resources—savings, profits and earnings—to purchase businesses, homes, and the land they stand on, and put money into mutually-owned long term investments—everything from local banks to pensions to infrastructure. In other words, if globalisation cannot be reversed by protecting the border of the nation state, then mutualism can help root capital to make it harder to pull up and outsource to China or India in the first place.

Today, David Cameron is the politician most closely identified with the big society—but, as David Marquand points out in this month’s Prospect, the concept does not need to be party political. If anything, it has more resonance with left, appealing to the working classes who loathe welfare dependency. Yet it would also chime across society. Through the idea of community land trusts—non-profit organisations that acquire and manage land in order to provide affordable housing for local communities—mutualism could offer a lasting solution to Britain’s housing crisis. According to a recent survey for the Council of Mortgage Lenders, this would resonate with around 96 per cent of the population.

Modern day mutualism would also undercut the Tories on their right flank. Labour could once again begin to advocate for building a better existence—not through charity and guilty concern for those less fortunate, but through work, fair pay, lasting institutions, and most of all family, home and community.

Ed Miliband’s first speech to the Labour conference was thin on policies, but he doesn’t have long before he’ll have to come up with some. The emergency budget later this month will force positions to harden, and will be crucial to setting an ideological direction for Labour. In the Labour leadership race, Ed Miliband managed to steal his brother’s place. As Labour leader, stealing David Cameron’s one novel idea would be another devilishly canny manoeuvre.

Nat Wei, one of the origjnators of the Big Society idea, and now a government adviser, uses his new blog to post what seems to me one of the most significant set of insights we have heard from someone close to policy. Nat says: * Big Society is like the Internet, not so much technically, but in the way that we do things. * It is an ecosystem. * It is about shifting power .... ... "The key test of whether something is Big Society or not is about whether it represents a genuine shift in power, whether the power of information, decision-making, and/or people to us as citizens without compromising on the quality of a given service affected, and without the vulnerable and poor being adversely impacted overall when the measure is taken together with other social justice actions happening at the same time".

Thankfully, while politics and the Big Society are intertwined because it represents a vision and a debate about the kind of country we want to build together, I’m also increasingly clear that it is here to stay. This is because the Big Society (or whatever you want to call it) builds on thinking from the internet – it is about a change in the way we operate, about releasing information, power, and people in their streets and institutions, and supporting people to take as much or as little control over their lives from whomsoever currently hoards it – mainly government, but also other large vested interests. Once you have had a taste of the freedom offered by the internet, can you imagine going back to life without it? Yes of course there will be challenges, just as there were with the creation of the internet, with those who would seek to disrupt it, and enterprises that harnessed it that have come and gone – and it had its critics too. But it is here to stay, for better or worse, and generally for the better.

How do all the pieces fit together? Well the different levels are all being developed at the same time, rather like internet servers, browsers, and websites or apps being created all at the same time, or like an ecosystem coming into existence with minerals, and large and small organisms evolving in real time. The governing philosophy is really about creating culture change to move away from the almost literally bankrupt(ing) ideas of the late 20th century about the relationship between citizens as passive recipients of state and non-state welfare and services, to their being more in the driving seat and to change the assumptions about how we should and can live our lives. The policy agenda is about creating specific legislative and non-legislative powers for citizens to take up in every department (“public sector reform”), creating financial, organising, and enduring capacity to enable citizens and citizen groups either directly or with the help of social enterprises to take up those powers (“social action”), and strengthening really local groups with formal and informal powers (“neighbourhood empowerment”). The citizen led approach is about together tackling all the barriers to mass citizen participation at a local level, recognising that these are formidable and finding solutions so that everyone can have good reasons for getting involved, demand and use local powers, and can have repeated experiences of citizen engagement that better fit their lifestyles and expectations and which lead to active involvement in local groups.

No doubt I will have missed out loads of detail and other organisations. Do comment with your thoughts and plugs for other activity underway and organisations involved in any of the above areas, though I cannot claim to endorse everything that is posted as a comment, and comments will be moderated. It goes without saying, despite many commentators and twitterati’s best attempts, that not everything these days that goes by the name “Big Society” is in fact bona fide. Sometimes, the name is evoked to try to protect an organisation that is having its funding reduced (“So much for Big Society”), or to describe an action someone intends to take or is about to take like running a public service (“I’m taking out the trash and doing my bit for Big Society”), or as a synonym with the fight against poverty. Such comments show how many though not all understand the once in a lifetime shift taking place and how wedded many are to the idea that government and large organisations must do and be everything, so much so that you could in fact replace “Big Society” in such comments with the word “government” without changing the meaning. The key test of whether something is Big Society or not is about whether it represents a genuine shift in power, whether the power of information, decision-making, and/or people to us as citizens without compromising on the quality of a given service affected, and without the vulnerable and poor being adversely impacted overall when the measure is taken together with other social justice actions happening at the same time.

Ben Toombs, blogging at RSA projects, explores the role of community organisers, now being promoted by one Labour leadership candidate as well the Coalition. Does anyone know what plans there are to train the 5000 organisers promised under Big Society? Will Citizens UK get the job, as they might have hoped from references in the Conservative manifesto?

How many organisers does it take to change our communities? Quite a few, apparently. The ballot papers for the Labour leadership election went out yesterday, with David Miliband having recruited 1,000 community organisers as part of his bid. In doing so he’s stolen a march on the Government, which has promised to recruit and train 5,000 of them to get the Big Society going.

So soon we’re going to have 6,000 new organisers, and the idea has new-found favour on both sides of the political divide. This, and the pre-election timing of both pledges, surely begs the question: are community organisers simply the latest must-have policy accessory, or can they really make a difference to our communities?

In that sense, the Miliband organisers are in a better position – they can align themselves against the establishment and draw on people’s anger to motivate and engage them. But the purpose of these organisers is overtly political, as well as social, in that they are Labour party members and intended to promote grass-roots engagement with politics. This worked well for Obama (him again) during his run for the presidency. But it’s a separate task, and I wonder whether it will diminish, or even conflict with, organisers’ focus on community issues.

There’s also a question as to how much duplication there will be between these organisers and the community development workers, local councillors, party members and others who are already active in their communities, only under a different name.

A piece of research I conducted at the end of last year indicated that the level of organisation in a community is largely self-perpetuating: organised communities organise themselves; those that lack that structure need a significant leg-up before they can reach that self-sustaining position. I do believe that organisers, be they Big Society or Labour, have the potential to provide that external leg-up, but their effectiveness will depend on who they are, how they’re presented to communities, what their agendas are, and how well they’re trained, funded and supported. If they’re being made available, they’re an opportunity for communities that should not be allowed to go begging. But we don’t yet know enough about them to judge.

Here’s a catch-up on the posts I’ve written over the past few days about Big Society, with a few more thoughts on networking and knowledge ecologies. All posts on the topic are here. As a reminder, the Big Society idea, launched pre-election by the Conservatives and now a centrepiece of coalition Government policy, is about a smaller state matched by more powers for local communities and encouragement for volunteering, social action, social enterprise and other forms of nonprofits.

The post There is no Big Society Big Plan – but that’s no bad thing said there’s a lot starting to happen under the Big Society banner, but it is a mistake to see it as an old-style government programme. The idea is that things emerge more organically, without any one Minister – or anyone else – being in charge. Fair enough for something aiming for wide-spread action by many interests, but the problem is that no-one really understands what Big Society stands for, or how to join in. There’s no voice, no story, and consequently a lot of rubbishing. In Since there’s no Big Society Big Plan, can we expect Big Process? Probably not I examined the idea of a Big Process to develop some clear purpose and shared vision, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, but concluded that was unlikely to happen. It’s not really feasible in the current political climate, and probably not the sort of thing Downing Street would want to orchestrate anyway.Networking Big Society – or maybe some knowledge gardening suggested another approach to get the best out of Big Society: build on the wealth of activity already supported by many community and voluntary sector networks, while also adding innovative methods for mass engagement. Help community organisers and anyone engaged in social action make good use of the social technologies now widely available, but under-used by traditional activists.Read more at socialreporter.com

I'm experimenting in using Amplify.com to collect tweets, blog posts and other articles. Amplify is a great free tool which allows you to write a blog post or a tweet, and also to clip content from web pages, add a comment, and post to several different places.

I could try explaining more ... but this is an exploration, and the best way to see what works, or doesn't, is just to get started and throw up some examples.

One of the great things about Amplify is that you can have both personal spaces (like mine here) and also group spaces. In the group spaces a number of people can add their separate posts, creating in effect a group blog, with scope for commenting.